Losers, is there no opportunity?

Image credit: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle

Losing is not an easy experience to deal with. People constantly fail in their life which has a negative effect on their will and beliefs. In order to accomplish success, we need the ability to withstand all the failures and move through them. Question is, how do we unlock this ability to never give up and keep going even when we fail.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston Churchill

The courage to believe in yourself is immensely powerful. Failure can be traumatic and stop you from attaining your goals. Overcoming fear of failure is essential to success, strong will has a significant effect on your beliefs. Another noteworthy factor is preparation. Young athletes just as professionals must be prepared to fail, sometimes we find ourselves in difficult spots. Preparation for any situation including failure that can happen is crucial to be confident.

Mental skills against failure

• Emotion and moods play a significant role in your performance. Your thoughts can either be an ally or a nemesis. Ability to control it is crucial for establishing a strong will. Taylor Thomas, a founder of Thomas Endurance Coaching, writes: “We all deal with fear and doubt, but successful athletes have an arsenal of practices to help confront negative circumstances and maintain a positive attitude. Once you’ve found the root cause of your fear of failure, and taken steps to address common setbacks you’ve run into, you’ve got to maintain a good relationship with the potential for failure in your life.” Finding the source of your fear is essential to control it. Athletes should be encouraged to question and confront their fears.
• Staying positive at all times can benefit how you feel and help you to withstand failures. Positive thinking has an enormous influence on your performances and mental health. Self — talk yourself into believing that you can overcome any failure. Even when you lose try to look at it as a lesson and turn it into improvement. This will strengthen your ability to never give up and grant strong will.

Make a list of goals

• Preparation is essential for success, but to construct it we need to know about our goals. Find out what you need to focus on during your training. Execute slowly but progressive and results will be astonishing.
• There are many ways that can help you with creating a correct approach to your goals. Start writing a journal where you mention all the small achievements and notes of improvement. This will help you to overcome failures in the future. Other tricks are visualisation methods like meditation, mindfulness and affirmations. Such techniques can benefit your mind and mental health.
• Goal setting exercise is significant for success. Working daily on small objectives will have a positive impact on your future results. Positive Psychology writes: “Change rarely happens magically overnight. It happens because we make a daily commitment to adapting our behaviours, mindset, and habits to work towards creating the change we want. Small, daily and consistent changes can lead to big results over time. This is how effective goal setting exercises work.”

Preparation strengths your will

• Naturally, we can win at all times. Failures will come one way or another but we can be prepared for them. Established ability to control your emotion and exercising goal setting daily surely helps to accomplish success. However, Mental preparation is also important for best performance. Sports Psychology Today reports that: “Mental toughness is a skill set, as the expert in sports and performance psychology Dr Justin Ross claims. It won’t function without practice, which should be a part of every training cycle. Key features of mental toughness are willingness and optimism. Willingness makes us determined to continue our efforts, without giving up or backing down, while optimism provides us with a positive belief in the outcome, both in the short and the long run.”
• Mental toughness without a doubt is a critical aspect. It has a significant effect on your performance during games. Practice mindfulness and visualization to be mentally prepared. Try out meditation as well as writing down all your strengths and weaknesses. Having an insight into what you can and can’t do is part of preparing yourself. Most importantly, conquer your fears of failure nothing will affect you more than this

Does it matter whether you win or lose

In a certain way, failures are as much or even more beneficial than winning. Failure shows us what we need to improve before the next game. Giving our best performance is much more significant than winning. However, nobody ever learnt how to wall without falling. In a certain manner, yes losing does matter but not negatively. If you look at failure as a lesson it becomes improvement, it’s all out perspective. Do not be afraid to lose, face competition with your best and you will never have any regrets.

Conclusion

Failures are not easy to get over and the fear of losing is even greater. However, like Kevin Garnett, retired NBA legend, after winning the championship said: “Anything is possible.” Mental toughness and the ability to execute your goals are essential for success. Positive thinking will have a great effect on your will and beliefs. Remember about preparation and daily work out of your mind and body. Find the roots of your fear and overcome it, in the end even the greatest of all the time fail but what made them elusive and inspiring individuals was the ability to always stand up.